Amid the vacant buildings that line Woodward Avenue, the windows of seven empty storefronts serve an artistic purpose.

The Woodward Windows project, which began in May 2011, uses empty window space in vacant buildings on Woodward Avenue to display art created by prominent local and international artists.

Although the Woodward Windows art project takes place in Detroit, Oakland County businesses 323East Gallery in Royal Oak and the Farbman Group in Southfield have been essential in the development of the exhibit.

Street Culture Mash Studios created the exhibit. The organization originally formed as an observation blog about the City of Detroit. The Woodward Windows project is the first physical project the group has spearheaded.

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“We saw the 1500 and 1400 blocks of Woodward (between Grand Circus Park and Campus Martius) as an opportunity to create excitement where there was an abundance of vacancy,” said Mike Han, the founder and creative director of SCMS. “We thought that if we were to activate with a world-class currated art gallery that we could help transform the area.”

The project changes art every three to four months.

The current exhibit features artist Gregory Holm whose work incorporates audio elements with some less traditional visual elements, including lighting effects.

Han believes it is important for this exhibit to be in Detroit because it draws people to an artistic aspect of the city they might not otherwise encounter.

“A lot of times, when people come in to the city for a game or something like that, they don’t get to experience a lot of the other things we have,” Han said. “There’s a lot of things that you need to dig and try to discover in order for you to have a really exciting experience (in Detroit).”

The exhibit is housed in a building owned by the Farbman Group. Han met Christina DiBartolomeo, an asset manager for Farbman Group, at the Bing Institute’s emerging leaders roundtable.

DiBartolomeo said the project was important to the group not only to bring attention to the company’s building, but also to help the local art community.

“Farbman Group’s been a big supporter for the arts the last 35 years they’ve been in business,” she said. “Just rejuvenating that area and reactivating that space for positive use, and being able to help local artists spread their work in a nicely-traveled area along Woodward was an interest to us.”

Personally, DiBartolomeo enjoys being involved in something that interests her.

“I just love art and I’m happy that we can do this,” she said. “It’s been a pleasure to see what people have come up with and what they’ve been able to put to life in our windows.”

Jesse Cory, the artistic director at gallery 323East, is the curator for Woodward Windows. He was approached by Han and asked to help curate the project because of the gallery’s close relationship with the local art scene.

Cory said it was easy to get artists involved with the project.

“When we were given access to these two storefronts on Woodward, it just seemed like a really awesome opportunity for artists to exhibit their work in the public domain, to have it there for people to drive by and walk by and engage with,” he said.

323East has been involved with street and graffiti art for many years, Cory said. The art on the gallery’s outside wall is changed annually, which has become an aspect of the gallery that the community pays attention to.

“That transitions into this project in Detroit,” he said. “(We took) that engagement and the positive feedback we got in the community and spread it to another.”

Cory lives in Detroit’s Eastern Market area. In addition to using his loft space to live, it will soon be used as an artist-in-residence space for out-of-town artists to come create art and live.

The project, which began in May 2011 has been well-received. Han is proud of the success the project has generated.

“I’ve heard that people have traveled to actually come see it, which was really, really exciting,” Han said. “It’s always nice to see when I’m down there, generally people stopping in front of the windows and sometimes taking photos.”